Page 24 of When Sorrows Come

“Pretty sure even being nobility doesn’t put you in charge of distance, and we took the Tuatha express the whole way.” I waved a hand, indicating Chelsea and Nolan. “Easy as pie.”

Chelsea raised a hand in the shyest of waves. For all her bluster and bravado in adapting to her life in Faerie, she was still a teenage girl who had only discovered how deep and complicated the strange roots of her immortal heritage went three years ago. She and the High Queen had more in common than she knew; they had both been born half human, although Maida’s blood had been adjusted by a hope chest, while Chelsea’s had been changed by yours truly.

And it wasn’t like I could tell her. The High Queen’s origins were a closely-guarded secret, extending even to her own Court. She wore cosmetic illusions when she went out in public, like now, to conceal the smallpox scars on one side of her face, left from a time before she’d been transformed. No one would guess, looking at her now, that she had come from anything but the purest Daoine Sidhe bloodline. She had hair the color of molten silver, falling around her shoulders in finely styled waves that looked less like hair and more like the consequences of pyroclastic flow. Her eyes were the color of blue topaz, and her features were delicatelysculpted—not due to any illusions, just due to the gifts of her father’s side of the family.

But she had given up her mother’s side for the man beside her, who looked so much like an adult version of Quentin that it made my chest ache a little, because the boy who called me “Mom” and cried in my arms wasn’t my son, not really, not ever. He was theirs, and when he became the mirror to this man, he would do it in their presence, far away from me. Seeing High King Aethlin here, in his natural environment, really drove home the fact that this was going to be Quentin one day, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Plus it was probably treason to even wish that I could try.

Maida nodded to Chelsea, acknowledging her, then blinked at the sight of Nolan. His mismatched eyes were striking, and an attribute he shared with his sister, the Queen in the Mists. He smiled roguishly back at her, inclining his head. She nudged Aethlin with her elbow.

“Nessa,” said the High King, after a startled pause. “Were you intending to announce the rest of Sir Daye’s company, or are we expected to introduce ourselves to our own guests?”

“I didn’t think you’d insist on meeting a visiting knight’s entire retinue,” said Nessa, clearly flustered. Poor Gwragedd Annwn. We were throwing everything off for her.

Then again, shewasthe High King’s seneschal, and this was a fairly severe breach of etiquette. I frowned, all the “something is wrong here” warning bells that had been ringing quietly in the back of my head starting to go off like sirens and combining with Quentin’s warning to form one truly unpleasant conclusion.

Blundering into trouble isn’t my superpower, but it might as well be.

Nessa was clearly wearing an illusion, but we knew that; she needed one to deal with the rest of us without doing damage through her mere presence. Expecting one of the Gwragedd Annwn to walk around without an illusion on was like expecting Raj to give in to Chelsea’s occasional pleas that he attend something called “an anime convention” with no human disguise and as many feline attributes as he could sustain while remaining bipedal. I still eyed her thoughtfully, eyes slightly narrowed as I waited to see how she recovered from this fumble.

“You have my apologies, Your Highness,” she said finally.“There were so many of them, all arriving at the same time, that I did not get their names. It was an oversight, and one which I can rectify if given a moment—”

“Doing something now doesn’t rectify leaving it undone in the past,” said Aethlin, frowning now. His tone was sonorous, and for all that I avoid the company of Kings as much as possible—the Cait Sidhe kind excepted—I could hear the warning in it. However long this woman had been serving his family, her service was conditional on continuing to please him. And he was not pleased.

Faerie doesn’t quite run on the feudal system, at least not according to Bridget, who is both a human academic and Irish and actually made a study of the true feudal system at one time. We run on a cheap copy, emulated when it was new and cool, but modified to suit the needs of a people who live forever and whose basic needs can be as varied as “basically human,” “must sleep for six months of the year or wither,” or “sets themselves on fire every night.” There’s no one-size-fits-all for us, and the purebloods who first decided on our system of titles and loyalties were smart enough to recognize that even as they mimicked an essentially unfair means of governance. A seneschal who defied a mortal king might find themselves imprisoned or beheaded.

Nessa was unlikely to face any consequences beyond dismissal. But people who aspire to be the seneschal of a king usually plan to do it for centuries, and if Quentin remembered her, she had already been here for at least a decade. She would have no concept of what came next, because doing that kind of long-range planning was ridiculous. The world could end in nuclear fire before it was time for Quentin to inherit and send her peacefully into a pampered retirement with the rest of the old King’s Court.

Stepping in was a necessity, if only for the sake of the seneschal. “We’re a bit much,” I said politely. “Both independently and as a group. May I present His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Nolan Windermere in the Mists.”

Nolan bowed, as formal and precise as if the etiquette had been completely without flaw and this was exactly the way a prince should always be introduced. “Your Majesties,” he said. “I am grateful for your hospitality and will carry word of your exquisite courtesy back to my sister, Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists.”

“You were rather more unconscious the last time we saw you,” said Maida, with a flicker of amusement.

“Yes,” agreed Nolan. “My sister, who is a very wise and very stubborn woman, and an excellent queen to her people, arranged to have me wake as soon as was permissible, that I might stand witness to her reign and to the bright restoration of our family’s Kingdom.”

“You do her proud,” said Aethlin.

“My sister’s chatelaine also travels with me,” said Nolan. “Mistress Cassandra Brown in the Mists.”

“Hi,” said Cassie, with a small wave. “I, uh, feel like there’s a lot of etiquette here that literally nothing in my life has ever come close to preparing me for, but it’s an honor to be here, and I’m looking forward to the wedding and stuff.”

Maida cocked her head. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize your bloodline, dear. Who claims you?”

“Um, my boss is Queen Windermere, and my graduate advisor is Professor Weinstein, and my parents are Mitch and Stacy Brown, and Toby’s sort of my aunt, which is why they asked me to come to their wedding, and please I would like to stop talking now.”

“Oh, to hell with this,” snapped the Luidaeg, and shoved her way to the front of the group, leaving Oberon behind as she pushed her way between me and Tybalt. Apparently his “hidden in plain sight” trick meant they were intending to keep his presence unannounced as long as possible.

Maybe that was why Nessa hadn’t thought to get everyone’s names, something that reallywasa shameful breach of etiquette. Any half-trained courtier knows you announce guests in the presence of a king and queen, and most of the available monarchs aren’t even the high kind. But if Oberon was projecting a “don’t notice, don’t ask questions” spell somehow, it might have stopped her from realizing she hadn’t asked certain essential questions at all.

The Luidaeg stood there in silence for a moment, an apparently human teenager facing down the two most powerful seated monarchs on the continent. Then she curtsied, so deeply it seemed like her forehead would have to brush against the floor.

Her hair, always an inky black, suddenly seemed to be dripping ink, or maybe tar, onto the straps of her overall and down her exposed arms. It soaked through the fabric of her overalls, gathering at her feet and on her hands, and when she straightened up again, it fell away, leaving her wearing a purple-black medieval gown witha subtle pattern of tentacles worked all through the fabric. It was striking, although not as striking as some of the dresses I’d seen her conjure for herself, improbable things made of the living, surging ocean.

“I am Antigone of Albany, called the Luidaeg by those in this modern world who know me,” she said, and her voice was soft, but it carried to every corner of the hall. She kept her eyes on the High King as she spoke, eyes solid black and slightly narrowed. “My party was offered hospitality but not asked to prove ourselves—and believe me when I say that any party I choose to claim belongs to me, and you should begratefulfor our presence.”

The hush that had begun when she chose to speak endured past her speech, as every eye in the room stared at her. Stared ather, I realized, the obvious danger, the thing that needed to be monitored at all costs. No one was looking at the nondescript man behind her, who could have been a changeling or could have been something simpler, but either way lacked her aura of palpable, radiant menace. She had, simply by flashing her fangs, become the most dangerous thing in the room.

---